Reviews

I was very surprised to find out that this movie was seen as underrated by some of the IMDB users.

When it was first screened here in Poland back in the early eighties it was a big hit. And it deserves attention. I still am amazed at the fact that you can make a very, very interesting and involving movie without the use of any spoken word!

Indeed, the story is not very complex, but it has its twists and turns, a couple of comic moments, moments of pure terror, some manticism... and in fact never gets boring. And not a single word! (apart maybe from something like "Atra" which supposedly stands for "fire") I have seen this movie several times and it never got me bored.

I personally think that J.J. Annaud did a terrific job ingeniously directing actors that were not supposed to utter a single meaningful word (he later semi-repeated his efforts in The Bear). Overall, one of my favorite movies.

9 out of 10.

This is no doubt one of my most favorite films of all times. It has a great screenplay filled with powerful and true characters. The cast is just great. And the gloomy atmosphere of our country back in the seventies...

The only flaw that I can think of is the fact that this film is probably very hard to understand for non-Poles as it is so very... Polish. And although the message the movie tries to convey seems to be more universal, you probably cannot get the whole of it if you were not born in a country located between Russia and Germany.

And if you compare this one to last year Peter Howitt's flick "Sliding Doors"... See how films of similar content can differ?